Douglas

A fulfilling and rewarding ending to the series

Revisado: 12-11-22

Slayton delivers (and how!) on the promise built up over the preceding two installments in the series. Adam is a fascinating, flawed, and endlessly resourceful protagonist, and the romance between him and Vic is pitch-perfect. Even all of the side characters have intriguing personalities and believable motives. If I have any complaint, it's that the coincidences occasionally seem just a shade too pat-- but with a sort of godgame aspect to the plot, maybe that's the point.

The narrator was astoundingly good. it's rare that I decide to follow a narrator's work, but Axtell is that good.

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Frustratingly good

Revisado: 10-07-22

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I wanted to enjoy it more. It's about 70% amazingly good, about 20% decently good, and 10% frustratingly clunky. The world building is intriguing and original, the characters are drawn extraordinarily well, the heroine is likably flawed, there's some terrific queer rep, and the prose is solid and witty. But sometimes the author tries too hard to be clever, sometimes the world building shows its seams, sometimes there are irritating intrusions of contemporary slang into this post-apocalyptic world, and sometimes the plot falls through huge gaping holes.

Overall, truly worth reading (and the narrator truly does a terrific job!), and I'll read the sequel, but I wish that 10% were up the quality of the rest of the book.

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A fun, informative read

Revisado: 09-20-22

There's not much of a plot, but the characters are endearing (especially Jordan and Angus, each of whom is adorably hot in his own way). At times it sounds more like a thinly dramatized lesson about asexuality than a novel, but the banter is fun enough to make up for that. Overall, I'd definitely look for more books fr the same author to enjoy!

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Great narration, so-so story

Revisado: 09-18-22

The author seems to have written this story originally as set somewhere else and then transplanted it to Ireland -- badly.

The story's not bad, but the localization feels off, and there are implausibilities that have nothing to do with the fantasy elements. Like -- how does a supposedly Catholic priest have a wife and daughter and still keep his church?

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Pseudoscientific blathering

Revisado: 09-18-22

i did some digging into this theory in databases of scholarly and peer-reviewed scientific journals, and the only person doing any research about this is the author-- so of course all his research backs it up. But he sells training to license people to use these ideas in therapy, so he has a clear conflict of interest.

Take everything with a whopping wheelbarrow full of salt.

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Despite lagging pacing, well worth the listen

Revisado: 08-23-22

The plot is decent (although some of the asides toward the end of the book feel like they belong to a different plot altogether), the characters delightfully engaging (as Klune's characters always are). Big Eddie feels a little *too* perfect a father, but maybe that's Benjy's nostalgia skewing the picture. There are a few mildly problematic tropes (t-word slurs casually used, a person whose disability apparently grants magical powers), but nothing that was a deal breaker for me. My only real problem with the book is the pacing. There are long passages that endlessly belabor a point or repeat previous information needlessly. It would benefit from some tightening, but overall it's a powerful, memorable book. The audiobook narrator was superb.

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Echoes of Ursula K. Le Guin, Clarke, C.J. Cherryh

Revisado: 07-29-22

This was a thought-provoking, philosophical tale of courage and aching, bleak beauty. Marg is a compelling character, insightful and with a rock-hard dignity that drives this tale of a world both like and unlike Earth. Griffith delicately balances the anthropological observation with a deeply personal and harrowing tale of a woman in search of herself. At times I would have sworn I was listening to/reading some of the best work of Cherryh, Clarke, and Le Guin. Well deserving of all the accolades. The reading and voice acting of the audio version was superb and nuanced.

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